> On 4/3/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>> The bigger problem might be that younger people are not taking up
>> classical music, and even boomers rarely listen to it except as
>> upscale mood music. That's sad, but aside from blasting out some old-
>> fartism, I don't know what to say about that.
>
> I have no data to draw on and can't make generalizations, but here in
> the 'nether' parts classical music seems to be thriving (generously
> subsidized by the State purse of course!) At the Concertgebouw, about
> twenty minutes walk from my house, you can hear classical music
> practically every night of the year and two or three concerts a day on
> the weekends. The opera is as busy as ever and has improved a lot over
> the years I've lived here. Tickets for popular productions are hard to
> come by.
We live 20 mins from Lincoln Center, and I could say the same thing. Most cities of any size in the U.S. have lots of live classical music. Ditto university towns. But the audiences skew fairly old - though that may be a function of ticket prices. At the New York Philharmonic, prices run from $30 to $96.
> I also think evolution of classical music in the 20th C is partly to
> blame for its loss of popularity. For me, the party ended around about
> Stravinsky; thereafter it became sterile and academic. For me, I'd
> rather listen to various jazz groups, tango orchestras, and Latin big
> bands from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, rock and and soul from the
> 1960s, salsa from the 1970s and 1980s, and some of the groovy ambient
> chill-out stuff from more recent years than any "serious" music from
> those respective time periods.
Shostakovich was great into the 1970s. And what about the atonal power trio - Schoenberg, Berg, Webern?
Doug